Events behind NRL timing controversy revealed

An overburdened NRL ground official was central to a time-keeping blunder that resulted in two Manly players returning early from the sin bin on Saturday night.

Fallout from Manly's 24-4 win over Melbourne at AAMI Park continued on Sunday, with the Storm ruling out a protest and the Sea Eagles' two competition points from the match appearing safe.

But the NRL will continue a review into the incident that saw Apisai Koroisau and Matt Wright returning from the bin one minute and 41 seconds earlier than they should have during the second half.

Under NRL rules, time-keeping duties for sin-bins fall on a designated member of each team's staff, with the ground manager only overseeing the process.

Ordinarily, clubs use the match clock as a guide, and only use a stop watch as a back up in case there is an outage.

However away teams - as was the case on Saturday night when no Manly official was present - can pass that job onto the home team's official to look after both teams if required.

Saturday night's scenario was then complicated when Melbourne's official became unavailable late. It was at that point the NRL's ground official added the job to his list of match-day duties.

That all created the perfect storm when Melbourne's Curtis Scott was sent off and Manly's Koroisau and Dylan Walker were sin-binned following a brawl in the second half.

Walker was required to undergo a head injury assessment as a result of the Scott punch that gave him a fractured eye socket.

Questions were asked of the NRL's ground manager on whether Wright could replace him at the end of the time period with a free interchange, as is part of the official's regular duties.

During that time it's believed he missed pausing his stopwatch during a stoppage for a Manly try, leading to him instructing Wright and Koroisau to return almost two minutes early.

It was at that point a furious Melbourne football manager Frank Ponissi argued the case with the NRL official, pointing to the match clock that time had not elapsed regardless of the 10 minutes showing on the watch.

"The NRL ground manager was required to deal with an interchange issue requiring urgent clarification and a timekeeping error regarding the sin bin period was made," an NRL spokesman said.

"The mistake is unfortunate and it is regretted.

"The NRL will conduct a review of the process and will discuss measures to ensure the circumstances are not repeated."

With Manly leading 10-4 at the time, they held out a Melbourne raid with 13 men rather than 11 as the Storm went the length of the field in the ensuing set.

Clubs have previously been fined or docked points for having too many players on the field at once, but it's understood the NRL won't penalise Manly over the matter as it reviews the process.